Unclescar

I prolly should have specified. I've used ATI and AMD for years, and then tried NVidia and had a much better overall experience. I'd like to stay with NVidia. Edit: Maybe in my next build I'll look at this again and consider all options at the time, but for now, I'll stick to "team green"

Anyone already have this and have a good experience with it? I'm talking high res textures, SMIM, ENBs etc... I've got all the hardware but my videocard(s) and new monitors for my new build. Right now I'm using a 27" 2560x1440 monitor, but will be getting a second 27" 1440p, as well as a 3440x1440 monitor at the same PPI. the 3440x1440 will be my main monitor that I game on, and I can't tell the difference between lower and higher AA, so that isn't much of a concern. I don't want to get a Titan Black as I prolly won't be able to afford a second one (Since I'll be in school), and by the time I've graduated, there will be much better options anyway. I'd rather not spend the extra $400-$500 on SLI 780ti's if SLI 780s can handle Heavily modded Skyrim at that resolution. I just want to hear from someone other than myself that SLI 780s (probably the 6gb varients) can give me heavily modded Skyrim at 3440x1440 at constant 60+fps. Other specs of my PC: 900D with custom waterloop. i7 4930K Asus Rampage Extreme IV Black Edition 32gb DDR3 RAM (will be 64gb eventually) 2x Samsung Evo 500gb in RAID0 Various other HDDs Edit: Just to note, I'll be sticking with Nvidia for this build. When it comes time to build a new computer/upgrade, I'll revisit.

5930K is also only a 6core. Only the 5960x is an 8 core, and is about twice the price. The performance between the 4930K and 5930K is .1Ghz, and the 4930K can be overclocked plenty high, the 5930K is basically just a bit more efficient. DDR4 will likely be ridiculously expensive, and many of the DDR4 speeds can be achieved with DDR3 overclocking. I thought about waiting for a 5930K, but noticed that a lot of the "new stuff" isn't really anything spectacular and there wouldn't be much of a reward for buying new technology that isn't amazingly better than what is already available with majority of the kinks worked out, and I also wanted to get my pc built before school started while I had extra spending money to do so, so I pulled the trigger on the 4930K, but I also did so for reasons other than gaming, and I don't plan on playing at 4K, only 3440x1440.

I'm pretty sure the price/performance arguement is invalid in this situation, since the question on the matter is basically "If you got free automatic GPU upgrades for an entire decade, which company would you prefer sending you the stuff? Nvidia for me. I've had a much better overall experience with them, though my AMD experience wasn't necessarily.. bad..

I will not. And I won't be going to x99 either, since I literally just got my 4930K and Asus Rampage 4 Black edition less than a month ago and haven't even finished putting the computer together.. I need my pc built and complete before school starts this fall, which means I couldn't wait for x99, plus I already have $400 of DDR3 RAM that is basically new and I wanted to reuse it. It seems that performance increase isn't really steller going from 4930K to 5930K, just efficiency mostly, and I can't justify paying double for the __60x.

I had the Asrock Z77 extreme 4 mobo for my i7 2600K as a replacement for my Gigabyte UD3 that my idiot friend broke. While the board itsself was pretty spiffy, drivers were a major issue, to the point where I just gave up with some of them. Had to do a bios flash and then download them one at a time directly from the website, and after many hours of tedious searching and patience on the matter, some of the drivers were still not working properly. The one that bothered me most was some of the USB ports in the back were unuseable as drivers could not be found by me, online, or by the device manager either. This was a big problem for me as I have many peripherals plugged in at once (keyboard, mouse, gaming keypad, software key, USB Midi Controller (E-piano), audio interface, flashdrive, external HDD, and Xbox 360 controller), and in order to use some of my peripherals I had to unplug other ones and I couldn't use all of them, I was constantly switching them out, whereas having those extra USB ports available would have given a much better experience. There are USB plugs on the mobo for case usb ports but my case was pretty old and cheap and didn't have any. Kinda a rant, but that's my experience with the Asrock z77 extreme 4, and mileage varies per person. Spiffy, but drivers were a huge pain in the ass.

the 6gb aren't being made by Nvidia, they are being made by 3rd party companies, like EVGA. I think there was another company who made their own but I can't find them available in the US. neither use the reference cooler though, EVGA's use the ACX cooler. I don't have a link but I think they said they weren't going to have any available with the reference cooler. It's alright, the performance won't be much different between the two, and without looking it up I think I recall the ACX cooler being a bit cooler and quieter than the reference design anyway. With good airflow through the case you won't need a fan directly on the GPUs as the hot air will be taken out of the case regardless, I've had a 750D firsthand and can tell ya that there is plenty of room for fans for good airflow. Also, they are reference PCB (unless EVGA also has a classified 6gb 780, classy's use a custom PCB), so you can actually cool them with any aftermarket cooler you want to install yourself, many companies have the standalone cooler available.

I'll comment on more than just your RAID question.. I'd snip but I'll be putting input into most of what you said. The biggest advantage that 2011 has over 1150 sockets is the 6core processors, quad channel ram, and more PCI-e lanes. I personally am using 2011 in my new build for similar reasons and uses than you, not limited by money but limited by price/performance I can justify for my needs. If you are going to go 2011, don't use a quad core processor, use a hectacore. (the 4930K is the best option as its a generation newer than the 3930K, has two more cores than the 4820K, and the 4960X brings very little performance for twice the cost.) The Rampage IV Black is a sexy as hell mobo, and is the one I use, but only because it was the only one that didn't clash with my color scheme. I would much rather have gone for a p9 x79-e WS board and put the money I saved towards a few pounds of steak and/or bacon. unless you have specific reasons for going rampage black, I'd get a simpler x79 as they all have the basic features needed without all the extra frills that most people won't ever even know how to use. That said, if you think you want to stick to a 4core cpu, then go with z97 and 1150 socket as you can get very similar overall performance for quite a bit lower cost, though keep in mind you won't get 64gb of Quad Channel RAM on z97 since it only has 4 DIMM slots, only 32gb of Dual Channel. For me that's a big one. I use my RAM often, so I went the quad channel 64gb route. as someone stated above, the 1000w PSU is a bit more than you'll need unless you plan on adding a second graphics card. On a related note, with the tiny difference in price, a 6gb 780 is a better option. In games you won't find yourself running into a 3gb bottleneck much, especially at 1080p, but higher resolutions textures take up more VRAM, and if you ever wanted to SLI a second card later, SLI 780 6gbs will perform better longer than the 3gb versions, even more-so as textures and resolutions get bigger. If you ended up going z97 and 1150 quad core with dual channel, the money you save with a cheaper socket can be put towards a 780ti rather than a regular 780, and if you aren't in a hurry you could either wait for the 6gb 780ti (end of this month?) or get a stand-in card that will perform tolerably til 800 series comes out. Anyways, to your RAID question. I'm assuming you plan on putting your SSDs in RAID 0 so they run together as one ultra quick drive. That's the best option for OS and games as it doesn't need to be heavily written to often and it reads crazy fast. It'd be silly to have two SSD in a Mirror raid.. As for HDDs, you have options. I'd go for 1, 6, or 10. I'd avoid 0 on its own, and 6 is basically a more stable version of raid 5, 5 being better for fewer smaller drives and 6 being better for more and larger drives. each has its own benefits and drawbacks. I recommend 10 for what you want to do. RAID 0 on your data is the least reliable and very much recommended against. Sure its the fastest and you keep your total capacity, but with 4 drives you get diminishing returns on the speed anyway, and one drive failing results in all data lost unless a miracle worker can recover it for you. RAID 1 is probably the safest as it saves your data identically across multiple devices. If one device fails, not a single bit of data has been lost, however you only get half your total capacity (4tb total vs 8tb total) as half or your total capacity is a copy of the other half. You could do two sets of RAID 1, running as two seperate 2tb drives that are fully completely backed up and available at all times. RAID 10 is a combination of the above. You get the speed benefits of RAID 0 and the safeness of RAID 1, so rather than having two seperate 2tb drives that are fully backed up, you have one 4tb drive that is always fully backed up. RAID 6 is similar to 10, like 0 you get a speed benefit as data is striped across the drives, but like 1 you get the safeness of being able to lose a drive or two and not lose your data. TL;DR. For SSDs go RAID 0 for infrequent writes but heavy reads. (OS and games) For HDDs go RAID 10 for speed benefits and data safety combined.

Oh. yeah. >.> I've got a idyit.

I can't remember what video they talked about it, but yes they record their videos in 4K.

Because the x79 chipset uses quad channel. it benefits from having 4 seperate Dimms and 8gb dimms give the biggest frame buffer per DIMM. Also, you don't hold back when using the "enthusiast" platform, you go all out.

its not so much necessary for just 2 way SLI or xfire, which lets you arrange your gpus in whichever slots you want, its also having other PCI lanes available for other cards in addition to your GPUs, such as a specific sound card, or SATA/RAID controller etc. Those don't require x16, but not have x16 available in all slots means you can only put your GPUs in certain slots, which sometimes limits where you can put your other cards.

I'd go x79 ("enthusiast platform") because of the extra PCI-e lanes available for that chipset will benefit your SLI video cards, and you can get a 6-core processor that will be much more future proof than mainstream 4-cores clocked at the same speed. On that note, the 4960x is an absolute waste of money. A 4930K will give the same performance, overclock just as well, for almost half the price. I got the 4930K for my build for all reasons listed above. as for motherboard, the best board available is likely the Asus P9 x79-E WS mobo, which is a board built from higher quality stuff and put through more instense quality testing, as well has having FOUR PCI-E x16 slots, which means you can arrange two Video cards in whichever slots you want and they will run as hard as they can be pushed without worry of PCI-bottlenecking. (which I don't think is too much of a concern with PCI-E 3.0 anyway..) On a related note, I went with the Rampage IV Black myself, but thats because the WS board didn't match my purple and black color scheme.. It is a gorgeous board though! And getting an x79 chipset means you should get 4 sticks of RAM, since its quad channel and is so sexy awesome. It's not necessarily a new chipset, z97 is much much much newer, but there is a reason x79 has been around for so long, and will be around for a long time til X99 is more affordable.

Personally I have a hard time buying something that is intentionally gimped. (780) when there is a full on version of it available (780 ti) Yes its a premium, and more expensive, and performance wise the improvement is subjectively not worth it according to many.. but if you are like me and just hate "settling" with something, get the best of the best that you can comfortably afford. If a 780 ti is in your budget, then get the 780 ti, and of course you could trade up to the 6gb version when it's released as well. I am in a similar boat, but not in a rush for my graphics cards since I'm doing a lot of case modding. I'm really really hoping the 6gb 780 ti's are available before school starts this fall, otherwise I'm going to SLI two 6gb 780s instead of two 6gb 780 tis, and I won't be quite as happy. most people, when critiquing other people's potential builds, will make recommendations that take money off of one item that isn't necessarily necessary, and putting that money towards a better graphics card. Just a thought on the matter. Also, go for a z97 mobo instead of the z87 unless you have already purchased.

I you are going to get the 6gb model, its best ran in SLI and on higher resolution screens. getting two 780 6gb will give far better performance than a single titan black for the same price. Since the price difference is so small, and it will be more and more common that games can use more than 3gb at 1440, there is no reason not to get the 6gb version over the 3gb version.

BAH! why would you go from a 4930K to a 3770K? current already out games might not use all 6 cores, but multi core optimization is becoming even more common. the 3770K will last an okay enough time, but the 4930K will last you much much longer, and there will be something else in a different enthusiast grade by the time mainstream catches up to you.

Newegg was out of stock of their black edition (they had a few open box) when I ordered mine a while ago.. I wasn't going to spend $400+ on an item that was returned regardless of the reason, I've already had bad experiences with used electronics in the past. I got mine from Microcenter. Their online store has plenty in stock, and Microcenter has an amazing return/exchange policy. Its not a dying socket, its the "enthusiast" or workstation platform. Its in less demand because the majority of people who buy individual parts like motherboards are building gaming computers, and pretty much always go with the 1150 socket due to it being newer, cheaper, and it doesn't have so many non-beneficial frills that the 2011 socket has. Gamers don't really benefit from more than 4 cores at the moment, and they often don't need the extra pcie lanes either, or the extra ram slots. anyone who uses their computer for other demanding things than gaming generally know they need (or just want) the extra stuff, and will pay more for a platform that gives them more awesomeness.

I have a 4930K and an asus rampage 4 black edition. its fantastic, though if the Asus P9 x79-E WS mobo fit my color scheme, I would prolly have gone with that one. The x99 is an entirely new socket (2011-3), your 4930K wouldn't fit into it, you'd have to get a 5960x (8core) or a 5930K (6core) (or 5820k?) The 4930K is already top of the line, the 5930K only brings a bit more power efficiency, and .1ghz, most other features that x99 brings will be overly expensive without too much of a performance benefit. Replace your Mobo, its your best option. x99 isn't worth the wait if you already have a 4930K.

TekSyndicate did a video about using two 3gb 780s (non ti) in SLI on a triple 1440p monitor setup (7680x1440). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY3Kn1fGGTI I think running two 780 6gb in SLI will be enough to have enjoyable framerates at triple 1080p, SLI doesn't scale well for a third, but the benchmarks that show that are using the 3gb version, and at lower resolutions. At higher resolutions, higher vram helps a lot, and SLI scales better per additional card at higher resolutions. So at a single 1080p, you won't notice a difference between two way and three way SLI, but at triple monitor, there will be a much bigger performance difference between two way and three way, especially with the 6gb frame buffer. Edit: Yes you can get similar performance with AMD for lower cost, but the overall quality of Nvidia seems to be better across the board, and my personal experience between many different cards is that Nvidia's extra cost has always been worth it.

not entirely true. there are other applications than gaming that can make use of more vram without needing more powerful graphics cards. On the opposite side, modded skryim can get up to or past 3gb of vram usage on a single 1080p, and he plans on playing on 1440p in the close enough future that he's planning around it. It will run out of power before it can make use of all 6gb when gaming, sure, but it won't crap out the moment it gets to 3gb, I'm betting it could get around 4/4.5gb before it really starts to struggle, and that struggle can again be removed/set back if you introduced a second card for SLI, in which case, when you are using more than 3gb of vram, SLI 780 6gbs will pull far ahead of SLI 780 3gbs. $80 for the removal of a bottleneck that will likely be hit occasionally in the near enough future seems worth it. I'd spend the money for the extra 3gb, even if in gaming alone you can't make use of all of it.

I've kinda got the same question. I have 4 sticks of 1333 DDR3 and a 2011 mobo. for audio production, mild video editing and gaming, would I see a benefit in getting higher clocked ram for quad channel?

I had a 650 Ti Boost that ran my 2560x1440 monitor pretty dang well. 4K is too expensive and new to be mainstream, and there isn't anything that can reliably run anything you want at 4K without struggling real hard. A single R9 290 should be able to run near everything without a sweat at 2560x1440 on high graphics settings. if you go with a 27" monitor (which is what I use) instead of a 32" monitor, your pixel density is higher and you can use lower AA settings which results in less demand on your gpu as well. So yes its a good time to buy a 1440 monitor. It is getting closer and closer to mainstream over 1080, as 4K becomes the new enthusiast level. Also, if you do end up being unhappy with the performance of the 290, you can (sometimes) flash the bios to make it run as a 290x, and you can also get a second one for xfire, which will last until 4K becomes the new mainstream and there are new GPUs that run it no problem on their own, which is a good ways away.

You could also setup auto notify, then check your email on occasion. Super Clocked Titan Blacks are often out of stock as well, out of curiosity I did auto notify, and two days later got an email saying "Hey its in stock now."

because some applications outside of gaming can make use of more ram without needing more computing power. Games use more computing power and less ram, other situations can work well with the opposite.

This is what I meant. comparing screenshots won't mean anything. having higher framerates with a 780 or 780ti will give you a much more enjoyable experience than the same graphical quality but lower framerate on a 770, even if the framerate difference isn't quite night and day, it's still noticeable.